Por Mauro Rebelo

Extracting DNA from the golden mussel

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Limnoperna fortunei attached to becker by it’s ‘foot’

A large research effort is made up of small moments.

The Golden Mussel is at least 900 km from our lab, so it is not easy to get ‘fresh’ samples whenever we want. But after a few frustrated attempts to extract ‘sequencing quality’ genomic DNA from preserved samples in our -80 oC freezer, we needed the real thing. So we flew in some mussels from São Paulo and had them acclimated in the lab for a few days. This one in the picture bellow was so comfortable that it decided to go for a walk, climbing the glass with its adhesive ‘foot’.

In our lab, we are bivalve experts. But in spite of the golden mussel invasion being a big problem, these beasts are small and dissection is always a challenge. Good that molecular biologist Juliana Americo has steady hands.

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Juliana Americo dissecting the Limnoperna fortunei’s gills for DNA extraction

This time the extraction was successful and we have the good quality DNA we needed for genome sequencing.

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Sequencing quality genomic DNA from Limnoperna fortunei in 2% agarose gel. The left most column are the 1-10kb size marker. The integrity of the band and the lack of smear dawns the column indicate the quality of the material

We are still waiting histology to confirm we have material from both a male and a female, since the purpose of this experiment is a gender genomic comparison.